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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Lunch Hour Ramblings

Draft Express has DeJuan Blair going to the Hawks at 19. Chad Ford (Insider) has the Hawks passing on Blair and taking Brandon Jennings. Both have Darren Collison going to the second round. My dream scenario: Blair falls to the Hawks, they take him, and buy their way (use Childress's rights, a future first-rounder, something) into a spot to draft Collison also. The more I think about the trade, the more appealing adding Collison seems as an antidote to Crawford's obvious and long-standing weaknesses with regard to shot volume, shot selection, and defense. A couple of weeks ago, I'd have been excited about Jennings (far from a sure thing but a great risk/reward option at 19) falling to the Hawks. Today I'm getting greedy.

In absolute terms, Jamal Crawford is a better basketball player than Flip Murray. Jamal Crawford is very likely to be a better basketball player than Flip Murray during the 2009-10 season. It's unlikely, however, that Crawford will be significantly better than Murray was last season.

4 comments:

I think Pachulia could be in the Hawks' price range. If they get Blair, they could get away with a purely defensive center to play only as needed. Rebounding would be taken care of. Then again, I'm more willing to play small than most.

I think Blair has such a unique skillset that his relative lack of height won't be a big issue (pun intended.)

Anyone who can pull down 22 points and 23 rebounds in an important conference game, battling against Thabeet, the 7 foot 3 inch guy everyone has slotted as a top 5 pick, then he's the real deal, especially when you hold him to 5 points and 4 boards.

He rebounds at such a ridiculous rate, the Hawks would be silly not to take him, if only to provide some needed off-the-bench toughness.